JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, who had recently launched a Republican campaign for governor, fatally shot himself in what police described as an apparent suicide, minutes after inviting reporters to his suburban St. Louis home for an interview.

Schweich’s death Thursday stunned many of Missouri’s top elected officials, who described him as a brilliant and devoted public servant with an unblemished record in office. Just 13 minutes before police received an emergency call from his home, Schweich spoke with The Associated Press about his plans to go public that afternoon with allegations that the head of the Missouri Republican Party had made anti-Semitic comments about him.

Later Thursday, the state GOP chairman denied making such comments.

Schweich had Jewish ancestry but attended an Episcopal church. His spokesman, Spence Jackson, said Schweich had recently appeared upset about the comments people were supposedly making about his faith and about a recent radio ad describing him as “a weak candidate for governor” who “could be easily confused for the deputy sheriff of Mayberry” and could “be manipulated.”

AP Photo/The Jefferson City News-Tribune, Julie SmithFlags around the Missouri Capitol complex in Jefferson City were lowered to half staff Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015, after the death of State Auditor Tom Schweich, who died Thursday morning.

“The campaign had been difficult, as all campaigns are,” Jackson said. “There were a lot of things that were on his mind.”

But Jackson said Schweich had been diligently going about his work, with another audit scheduled to be released next week.

Clayton Police Chief Kevin Murphy said Schweich was pronounced dead at a hospital from a single gunshot.

“Everything at this point does suggest that it is an apparent suicide,” Murphy said, adding that an autopsy will be conducted Friday.

Schweich was 54. He had been in office since January 2011 and had easily won election in November to a second, four-year term. He announced a month ago that he was seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2016, and was gearing up for a primary fight against Catherine Hanaway, a former U.S. attorney and Missouri House speaker.

Schweich seemed unusually agitated – his voice sometimes quivering and his legs and hands shaking – when he told an AP reporter on Monday that he wanted to hold a press conference to allege that Missouri Republican Party Chairman John Hancock had made anti-Semitic remarks about him.

Schweich postponed a planned press conference Tuesday. But he called the AP at 9:16 a.m. Thursday inviting an AP reporter to his home for a 2:30 p.m. interview and noting that a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was also invited. An AP reporter spoke with Schweich by phone again at 9:35 a.m. to confirm the upcoming interview.

AP Photo/Missouri House of Representatives, Tim BommelIn this photo provided by Tim Brommel, from left: Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon; Monsignor Robert Kurwicki; Speaker John Diehl and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder for a brief prayer service for the family of Missouri Auditor, Tom Schweich Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015 in the House Chamber in Jefferson City, Mo.

Police say the emergency call to Schweich’s house was received at 9:48 a.m.

Schweich told the AP he had heard that Hancock had been making phone calls last fall in which he mentioned that Schweich was Jewish. Schweich said he felt the comments were anti-Semitic and wanted Hancock to resign the party chairmanship to which he was elected last Saturday.

Hancock told the AP on Thursday that Schweich had talked to him about the alleged comments last November, but not since. Hancock, who is a political consultant, said he met last fall with prospective donors for a project to register Catholic voters. Hancock said that if he had mentioned that Schweich was Jewish, it would have been in the context that Hanaway was Catholic but that was no indication of how Catholics were likely to vote.

“I don’t have a specific recollection of having said that, but it’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion,” Hancock said.

At the Capitol early Thursday afternoon, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder joined lawmakers in the House chamber for a brief prayer service remembering Schweich.

Hanaway said in a statement that she was “deeply saddened” by Schweich’s death and described him as “an extraordinary man with an extraordinary record of service to our state and nation.”

I don’t have a specific recollection of having said that, but it’s plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion

Schweich, who attended Yale University and then Harvard Law School, made his political debut in 2009. He had considered running for the seat being vacated in 2010 by Republican U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, and he had the encouragement of his mentor, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth. But Schweich deferred to Rep. Roy Blunt to avoid a divisive GOP Senate primary and instead challenged and defeated Democratic State Auditor Susan Montee in the 2010 election.

Schweich spent last weekend wooing fellow Republicans during the state GOP’s annual conference in Kansas City. He spoke energetically, frequently touting his work rooting out government waste and corruption.

But he also emphasized charity, citing his Christian beliefs as a source of compassion and promising to cut back on government spending and misuse without hurting the poor.

“Part of being a Christian is you gotta help people,” Schweich told a dozen members of the Missouri Republican Assembly on Saturday at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown.

Later that day he scooped dollops of ice cream for supporters until his hands hurt.

Schweich was Danforth’s chief of staff for the 1999 federal investigation into the deadly government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and followed Danforth to the United Nations, where he was chief of staff for the U.S. delegation.

President George W. Bush appointed Schweich to the State Department in 2005 as an international law enforcement official. Two years later, Bush picked Schweich to coordinate the anti-drug and justice reform efforts in Afghanistan.

Associated Press reporters Summer Ballentine and Marie French in Jefferson City and Alan Scher Zagier in Clayton contributed to this report.

Congressional Republicans are challenging several health regulations, with one senator suggesting restaurants shouldn’t have to make their employees wash their hands after bathroom visits.

Such restaurants would have to prominently disclose their decision, and then would probably would go out of business, said newly elected Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. But they should have that choice, he said.

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Tillis raised the issue when speaking Monday to the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Restaurant chains such as Starbucks should be able to skip obligatory hand-washing by workers, he said, “as long as they post a sign” and take other steps to alert the public.

“Let them decide” such issues, Tillis said, adding: “That’s probably one where every business that did that would go out of business. But I think it’s good to illustrate the point, that that’s the sort of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country.”

Tillis defended his point in an interview Tuesday.

“Sometimes there are regulations that maybe we want to set a direction, but then let those who are regulated decide whether or not it makes sense,” he said. They might pay a huge price, he said, but “they get to make that decision versus government.”

Tillis’ comments came as some Republican presidential hopefuls say parents are justified in sometimes having their children avoid vaccinations generally required for attending school.

Vaccinations were not raised at his Monday event. But Tillis said Tuesday, “Vaccinations are important to keeping our kids safe, keeping our schools safe.”

You might not have noticed that Mitt Romney is mulling a third bid for the White House. It didn’t get a lot of headlines. Not big ones, anyway.

Mr. Romney let slip his plan on Friday, telling a “private” meeting of 30 former supporters in New York he was “thinking about it.” Ponder that for a moment: do you call together 30 wealthy, time-pressed people to mention that you’re batting around the idea of running for president if it’s just one of those passing fancies that occurs during a commercial break while you’re watching “The Big Bang Theory“? Probably not. So it’s fair to guess that Mr. Romney must be thinking pretty hard, and wanted the word to get out.

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As it did.“Mitt is considering because he thinks he can make a difference,” Spencer Zwick, a Romney advisor who was at the meeting, told the Wall Street Journal.

There’s a reason for the timing of Mr. Romney’s disclosure, two years before the next president takes office. Jeb Bush, brother of George W. and son of George H.W., both previous presidents, revealed last month that he is actively considering his own run for the Republican nomination. Mr. Bush will spend the next few months exploring whether he can build enough support, and attract enough money, to make a serious run at the nomination. Since Mr. Bush and Mr. Romney both come from the moderate, establishment wing of the party, it’s unlikely they could both build the sort of war chest needed to mount a credible bid. The deep-pocketed contributors needed to write the cheques would be loath to throw money at two moderates duking it out for the middle ground.

AP Photo/Susan Walsh,Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will spend months trying to wrap up big donors for a run at the Republican nomination.

So, once Mr. Bush made known his plan to enter the ring, Mr. Romney had to act quickly. Though he’d insisted previously that his 2012 effort was his last, something must have changed his mind. Perhaps it was the less-than-stellar caliber of the other potential candidates. Or maybe he figured that if a third Bush could seek the job, there was no reason he couldn’t make a third try of his own. Or maybe he’s just rich and bored and thinks he’s learned enough from his previous two bids to take another stab at it.

The Democrats once ran a losing candidate in two successive elections — Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956. He lost both times to Dwight D. Eisenhower. This would be Mr. Romney’s third try. He lost the nomination in 2008 to Sen. John McCain. He won the 2012 nomination but lost to President Barack Obama.

If you want to make the point that the Democrats are running a tired old retread, you should come up with something better than a retread of your own.

He could be forgiven for thinking he was a victim of bad timing in 2012. Though he won the nomination, the battering he took in the process left him with wounds that could be easily exploited by the Democrats. Most damaging was his effort to placate the sudden clout of the Tea Party, the right-wing, no-compromise, burn-down Washington faction that preferred ideological purity over any serious shot at victory. The effort undermined his credibility and damaged his standing with moderates, while never winning much support from the tea partiers.

In any “normal” election year – any time over the past 25 years – he might have run as a very rich but fairly reasonable conservative with a credible record, up against an untried academic whose political experience consisted mainly of eight years in the Illinois senate, a state with a well-documented record for political corruption and economic dysfunction. But then the Tea Party came along and messed everything up.

President Barack Obama can register the same complaint, of course. If not for the tactics of a relatively small group of Republican diehards, he might have had a Congress open to something other than a single-minded determination to bring the governing process to a screeching halt. If Mr. Romney had won in 2012, he’d have faced the same challenge that fiercely vexed Republican House Speaker John Boehner over the past four year: what do you do with people who can’t say anything but “No!”?

So maybe Mr. Romney figures that, the party establishment having succeeded in muzzling the worst pooches in the Tea Party dog pound, his odds are better this time. Mr. Bush’s positions on education and immigration make many Republicans decidedly nervous. Two Bushes in the White House was plenty for many people, even if Jeb is supposed to be more of an intellectual than his older brother. And it would make it difficult for Republicans to question the dynastic ambitions and sense of entitlement of the Clinton family if they’re running a dauphin of their own.

Maybe Mr. Romney is right. Or he could just make people wonder about the party itself. How dynamic can the GOP claim to be when Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are the best they can do? Not that Hillary Clinton is a breath of fresh air, but if you want to make the point that the Democrats are running a tired old retread, you should come up with something better than a retread of your own.

TRENTON, N.J. — Fellow Republicans on Saturday debated the fallout over new allegations that Gov. Chris Christie made inaccurate statements about his knowledge of lane closures orchestrated by top aides as apparent political payback.

Some said the accusations could derail any hopes of Christie running for president in 2016 if he can’t shake the scandal soon, while others were quick to express faith in the governor while discrediting his accuser and questioning his motives.

A letter released Friday by a lawyer for a former Christie loyalist who ordered the closures on the heavily traveled George Washington Bridge said evidence exists suggesting the governor knew about the closings as they happened in September, which would contradict Christie’s previous assertions. The governor’s office has denied the claims by David Wildstein, a former executive with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was among four people who lost their jobs in the scandal.

Reaction among top Republicans on Saturday appeared mixed, with most believing he could weather the storm but acknowledging the latest allegations hurt.

“It’s not good for him,” said Matt Beynon, a Republican operative who worked on former Sen. Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign and still has him as a client. “The longer the story goes on, the worse it gets for him. If this is still an issue a year from now, he’s going to have trouble pulling the trigger. … Gov. Christie will have to think long and hard about running.”

But Ken Langone, a co-founder of Atlanta-based Home Depot Inc. and a staunch Christie supporter, expressed no such reservations.

“I have complete faith and trust that the governor is telling the truth, and I continue to believe that he would be a superb president if he were elected in the future,” Langone said.

Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant, agreed that Christie’s chances on a national stage won’t be harmed so long as he has been honest about what he knew.

“As long as he was telling the truth, he is fine,” Mackowiak said. “But if he knew about this, it brings him in directly and adds – potentially – dishonesty to the charges.”

Christie, who has kept mostly to the sidelines during the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl, which his state his hosting, received a smattering of boos and some cheers during a pre-game ceremony in New York on Saturday. He didn’t appear affected by the crowd’s reaction during the Times Square ceremony.

As the new head of the Republican Governors Association, Christie’s priority this year is raising money for the party’s gubernatorial candidates around the country. Republicans maintain that donors are staying loyal to Christie so far.

“My donors are saying they believe what Gov. Christie is saying. They’re giving him a lot of rope,” said Ray Washburne, who leads the Republican National Committee’s fundraising effort.

“He’s not raising money for himself,” Beynon added. “If you’re a donor in Cleveland, you’re thinking about (Ohio Gov.) John Kasich and not Chris Christie.”

The head of the state legislative panel looking into the traffic jams said Wildstein’s new allegations validate the skepticism committee members have expressed throughout the probe, an investigation Christie once referred to as the Democrats’ obsession and some state Republicans have called “a witch hunt.”

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat, said he doesn’t know what evidence Wildstein may have but said it could be an email or document that fell beyond the date range called for in the original subpoena.

Wildstein is among 20 people and organizations close to Christie who must comply with a new round of subpoenas by Monday, though Wisniewski said almost all the recipients have requested more time.

When Wildstein, a former political blogger who has known Christie since high school, appeared before the legislative panel, he asserted his right against self-incrimination and refused to answer any questions. His lawyer, Alan Zegas, has said Wildstein would testify if granted immunity from prosecution.

Wildstein has been identified as the person who ordered the lane closings. He resigned from a $150,000-per-year job that he got with Christie’s blessing because of the scandal.

“Any time you have disgruntled employees leave an operation you always wonder what’s going to happen,” Mackowiak said. “You could see this coming. Their lives have changed forever.”

WASHINGTON — Their unity fraying, House Republicans bent but did not blink Monday in their demand for changes to the nation’s health care overhaul as the price for preventing the first partial government shutdown in 17 years.

The House voted on a continuing resolution which included a scaled back repudiation of Obamacare. The CR will now be sent to the Senate where it will likely again be stripped of its anti-Obamacare language. Regardless of how the Senate votes, they will not vote in time for the midnight deadline to keep the government running.

“We’re at the brink,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., moments after the Senate voted 54-46 to reject the latest GOP attempt to tie government financing to delays in “Obamacare.”

The stock market dropped on fears that political gridlock between the White House and a tea party-heavy Republican party would prevail.

As lawmakers squabbled, President Barack Obama urged House Republicans to abandon demands he said were designed to “save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right of their party.” Speaking of the health care law that undergoes a major expansion on Tuesday, he said emphatically, “You can’t shut it down.”

Earlier, the president said he was willing to discuss budget issues with congressional leaders. He added, “The only way to do that is for everybody to sit down in good faith without threatening to harm women and veterans and children with a government shutdown.”

In a fast-paced series of events, the Senate voted to reject a House-passed measure that would have kept the government open while delaying implementation of the health care law for a year and permanently repealing a medical device tax that helps finance it.

House Republicans, reacting swiftly, decided to try again. Their new proposal was to allow the government to remain open, while imposing a one-year delay in a requirement in the health care law for individuals to purchase coverage. Their measure also would require members of Congress and their aides as well as the administration’s political appointees to bear the full cost of their own coverage by barring the government from making the customary employer contribution.

“This is a matter of funding the government and providing fairness to the American people,” said Speaker John Boehner. “Why wouldn’t members of Congress vote for it?”

About 800,000 federal workers, many already reeling from the effect of automatic budget cuts, would be ordered to report to work Tuesday for about four hours – but only to carry out shutdown-related chores such as changing office voicemail messages and completing time cards. Once they departed, they would be under orders not to do any government work.

Some critical services such as patrolling the borders, inspecting meat and controlling air traffic would continue. Social Security benefits would be sent, and the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and poor would continue to pay doctors and hospitals.

Asked if a stand-alone spending bill was possible instead, he said, “That’s not going to happen.”

Democrats said the House GOP measure was doomed in the Senate, and would meet the same fate as every other attempt to delay the law that passed in 2010 and was upheld by the Supreme Court.

A shutdown would cause an uneven impact across the face of government, sending hundreds of thousands of workers home and inconveniencing millions of Americans who rely on government services or are drawn to the nation’s parks and other attractions.

Many low-to-moderate-income borrowers and first-time homebuyers seeking government-backed mortgages could face delays, and Obama said veterans’ centers would be closed.

About 800,000 federal workers, many already reeling from the effect of automatic budget cuts, would be ordered to report to work Tuesday for about four hours — but only to carry out shutdown-related chores such as changing office voicemail messages and completing time cards. Once they departed, they would be under orders not to do any government work.

With less financial impact but important to many viewers, a camera that feeds images of a new-born panda at the National Zoo would be shut down.

Yuri Gripas-Pool/Getty ImagesU.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a meeting of his Export Council in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on September 19, 2013. Republicans controlling the House are moving to ship to the Senate a measure that would prevent a government shutdown but cripple the health care law that’s the signature accomplishment of Obama’s first term

Some critical services such as patrolling the borders, inspecting meat and controlling air traffic would continue. Social Security benefits would be sent, and the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and poor would continue to pay doctors and hospitals.

Ironically, the issue at the core of the dispute, implementation of key parts of “Obamacare,” will begin Tuesday on schedule, shutdown or no.

Among Republicans, some said the revised legislation did not go far enough in seeking to delay a law that all members of the party oppose and want to see eradicated.

Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia said it felt as if Republicans were retreating, and Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia said there was not unanimity when the rank and file met to discuss a next move.

For the first time since the showdown began more than a week ago, there was also public dissent from the Republican strategy that has been carried out at the insistence of tea party-aligned lawmakers working in tandem with GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pa., said he was willing to vote for stand-alone legislation that would keep the government running and contained no health care-related provisions. “I would be supportive of it, and I believe the votes are there in the House to pass it at that point,” the fifth-term congressman said.

Dent added he has been urging the Republican leadership to allow a vote along those lines.

A second Republican, Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado, said, “We haven’t given up on Obamacare … but for this week we may have to give up. We tried everything and Harry Reid won’t budge,” he said of the Senate majority leader.

Other Republicans sought to blame Democrats for any shutdown, but Dent conceded that Republicans would bear the blame, whether or not they deserved it.

U.S. troops were shielded from any damage to their wallets when the Senate approved legislation assuring the military would be paid in the in the event of a shutdown. The House passed the bill early Sunday morning.

That had no impact on those who labor at other agencies.

“I know some other employees, if you don’t have money saved, it’s going to be difficult,” said Thelma Manley, who has spent seven years as a staff assistant with the Internal Revenue Service during a 30-year career in government.

As for herself, she said, “I’m a Christian, I trust in God wholeheartedly and my needs will be met.” She added, “I do have savings, so I can go to the reserve, so to speak.”

The last time the government shutdown, in 1996, Republicans suffered significant political damage, and then-President Bill Clinton’s political fortunes were revived in the process.

Now, as then, Republicans control the House, and senior lawmakers insist even a shutdown isn’t likely to threaten their majority in the 2014 elections. “We may even gain seats,” Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, who chairs the party campaign committee, said recently.

For all the controversy about other matters, the legislation in question is a spending bill — and there was little if any disagreement about the spending-related issues.

The House and Senate have agreed to fix spending for a wide swath of federal programs at an annual level of $986 billion for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, the same as for the 12 months just ending.

Without separate legislation to make further reductions, across-the-board cuts would automatically take effect early next year that would reduce the level to $967 billion.

A Republican National Committee report says the party should change the way it recruits candidates, talks to voters, uses technology, raises money and reaches out to minorities in an effort to appeal to a broader base of voters and win elections.

Republicans have become too insular, frequently sound like bookkeepers and need to be more inclusive in dealing with those who disagree with the party platform on abortion rights and same-sex marriage, the report, released today, says. Party leaders commissioned it after 2012 election losses spotlighted demographic and technological shortfalls with Democrats.

“There’s no one reason we lost,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, 41, said this morning at the National Press Club in Washington. “Our message was weak, our ground game was insufficient, we weren’t inclusive, we were behind in both data and digital, and our primary and debate process needed improvement.”

The perception that we’re the party of the rich unfortunately continues to grow

He made the comments immediately after declaring Monday “Day One” of the party’s push to change perceptions the audit uncovered – that the GOP is “narrow minded,” “out of touch” and “stuffy old men.”

“The perception that we’re the party of the rich unfortunately continues to grow,” Priebus said as he released the report, drawn up by panelists with strong ties to “big-tent” Republicans who have long favored more inclusive policies opposed by ideological purists.

Priebus said the RNC would spend $10 million this year, an unprecedented amount in a non-election year, to hire hundreds of workers to network with, court and register minority voters.

“We’ve never put this many paid boots on the ground this early in an off year,” he said. “We’ve also never been this dedicated to working at the community level, to win minority votes, household to household.”

Philosophical Divisions

Some of the report’s proposed mechanical changes could be accomplished with adequate funding; those that call for a philosophical pivot — becoming more accepting of those who disagree with the party’s positions — will be harder to enforce. Candidates straying from Republican doctrine in recent years have been penalized by the party’s base in elections.

“Our standard should not be universal purity,” Sally Bradshaw, one of the report’s authors and a longtime consultant to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, said at a briefing today.

The report, which includes more than 200 recommendations and runs almost 100 pages, is often blunt.

“The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself,” it says. “We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.”

The report calls for the party to be more inclusive, or risk becoming further marginalized.

“When it comes to social issues, the party must in fact and deed be inclusive and welcoming,” the report says. “If we are not, we will limit our ability to attract young people and others, including many women, who agree with us on some but not all issues.”

Priebus said party leaders need to “constantly remind everybody” to treat all, including gays and minorities, with dignity and respect. The party would continue to support Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who last week said he would back same-sex marriage after revealing that his son is gay, he said.

“It’s his decision,” Priebus said. “I support him having that opinion.”

Priebus also made clear he doesn’t expect any of the party’s policy positions to change.

“Our policies are sound,” he said. “But I think that, in many ways, the way that we communicate can be a real problem.”

The report calls for a shorter primary campaign season and no more than a dozen debates during that period, with the first no earlier than Sept. 1, 2015. It also says the party should consider penalizing candidates through the loss of convention delegates if they don’t abide by the party’s debate structure.

Brendan Hoffman/Getty ImagesU.S. Sen. Rob Portman announced on March 14 that he has reversed his stance against same-sex marriage because his son, Will Portman, is gay.

Female Voters

On wooing more female voters, the report calls for the creation of a list of surrogates based on their policy and political expertise and calls on the RNC’s media team to focus on “booking more women on TV on behalf of the party and be given metrics to ensure that we aren’t just using the same old talking heads.”

The party also needs to “educate Republicans on the importance of developing and tailoring a message that is non- inflammatory and inclusive to all,” the report says.

On immigration, the report calls on the party to “embrace and champion comprehensive” changes.

“If we do not, our party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only,” it says. “Comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.”

Younger Voters

To court younger voters, the report says Republican leaders need to more actively participate in interviews on the programs that they watch. It also calls for all party digital and data efforts to have the young voter as a major focus.

To match the Democrats’ advantage in technology, the RNC should hire a chief technology and digital officer by May 1, the report says.

It also calls for the creation of a data platform for the party that would be accessible to all qualified Republican organizations and campaigns so they can share information. Priebus said the RNC plans to open a field office in Silicon Valley to boost its ties to the technology development community.

The report also recommends a more populist tone.

“We have to blow the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attack corporate welfare,” it says. “We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when CEOs receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.”

Alex Wong/Getty ImagesFormer Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney acknowledges the crowd during the second day of the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 15 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Electoral Success

Formally known as the Growth and Opportunity Project, the effort was initiated by Priebus on Dec. 10 as a way to study how Republicans can find more electoral success — from the local level to Congress and the presidency.

The study group’s other members included Henry Barbour, nephew of former Mississippi governor and RNC chairman Haley Barbour; Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary under President George W. Bush; and RNC members Zori Fonalledas of Puerto Rico and Glenn McCall of South Carolina.

Priebus also said he wants the party’s national convention, typically held in late August or early September in presidential election years, moved to June or July. He argued that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was hampered by his inability to tap funds slated for the general election to defend himself against Democratic attacks ahead of a late August convention.

Core Message

Before any of the proposed fixes can take full effect, Republican leaders may face their internal fissures that have led to the nomination of candidates viewed by independent voters as too extreme.

Some Republicans unhappy with losses in 2012 are pushing for a new core message and moderation on social issues and views on how to deal with undocumented immigrants, while others are arguing the party needs to stick to principles.

That tension was on display this past weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, where most of the speakers called on the party to stick to its core beliefs and there was no indication that the party base is willing to change the type of candidates it backs.

Alex Wong/Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama delivers remarks during a Women’s History Month Reception in the East Room of the White House on Monday in Washington, DC.

Exit Polls

Exit polls of voters in the Nov. 6 election showed President Barack Obama dominating Romney among single women, Hispanics, blacks and younger voters en route to carrying eight of the nine states both camps viewed as the most competitive. Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, the exit polls showed. That translated to a 44-percentage-point advantage over Romney, who won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote — down from 31 percent for the party’s presidential ticket in 2008, 44 percent in 2004 and 35 percent in 2000.

Blunting those Democratic advantages is critical for Republicans: Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority bloc of voters, and the party risks losing much of an entire generation if they can’t appeal to younger voters.

One area not directly addressed by the study group is how the party goes about selecting its candidates for statewide races in the era of the anti-tax Tea Party movement.

Losses by Tea Party-backed U.S. Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana who drew controversy with comments about rape and pregnancy cost Republicans seats that they were poised to win a year before the election. When combined with similar defeats in 2010, some Republicans have complained that the primary fights that led to Democratic victories prevented them from gaining control of the Senate.

“We don’t pick winners and losers in primaries,” Priebus said. “It’s a business that we’re not in.”

It has become conventional wisdom that Republicans are suffering an internal split that President Obama is successfully exploiting to neuter the Republican House. It is not true, however, that the Republican split is philosophical and fundamental. And that a hopelessly divided GOP is therefore headed for decline, perhaps irrelevance.

In fact, the split is tactical, not philosophical; short-term, not fundamental. And therefore quite solvable.

How do we know? Simple thought experiment: Imagine that we had a Republican president. Would the party be deeply divided over policy, at war with itself in Congress? Not at all. It would be rallying around something like the Paul Ryan budget that twice passed the House with near 100 percent GOP unanimity.

If Obama wants to recklessly expand government, well, as he says, he won the election.

In reality, Republicans have a broad consensus on program and policy. But they don’t have the power. What divides Republicans today is a straightforward tactical question: Can you govern from one house of Congress? Should you even try?

Can you shrink government, restrain spending, bring a modicum of fiscal sanity to the country when the president and a blocking Senate have no intention of doing so?

One faction feels committed to try. It wishes to carry out its small-government electoral promises and will cast no vote inconsistent with that philosophy. These are the House Republicans who voted no on the “fiscal cliff” deal because it raised taxes without touching spending. Indeed, it increased spending with its crazy-quilt crony-capitalist tax “credits” — for wind power and other indulgences.

They were willing to risk the fiscal cliff. Today they are willing to risk a breach of the debt ceiling and even a government shutdown rather than collaborate with Obama’s tax-and-spend second-term agenda.

The other view is that you cannot govern from the House. The reason Ryan and John Boehner finally voted yes on the lousy fiscal-cliff deal is that by then there was nowhere else to go. Republicans could not afford to bear the blame (however unfair) for a $4.5 trillion across-the-board tax hike and a Pentagon hollowed out by sequester.

The party establishment is coming around to the view that if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.

There is history here. The Gingrich Revolution ran aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.

Obama’s post-election arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.

The debt-ceiling deadline is coming up. You can demand commensurate spending cuts, the usual, reasonable Republican offer. But you won’t get them. Obama will hold out. And, at the eleventh hour, you will have to give in as you get universally blamed for market gyrations and threatened credit downgrades.

The more prudent course would be to find some offer that cannot be refused, a short-term trade-off utterly unassailable and straightforward. For example, offer to extend the debt ceiling through, say, May 1, in exchange for the Senate delivering a budget by that date — after four years of lawlessly refusing to produce one.

Not much. But it would (a) highlight the Democrats’ fiscal recklessness, (b) force Senate Democrats to make public their fiscal choices and (c) keep the debt ceiling alive as an ongoing pressure point for future incremental demands.

Go small and simple. Forget about forcing tax reform or entitlement cuts or anything major. If Obama wants to recklessly expand government, well, as he says, he won the election.

Republicans should simply block what they can. Further tax hikes, for example. The general rule is: From a single house of Congress you can resist but you cannot impose.

Aren’t you failing the country, say the insurgents? Answer: The country chose Obama. He gets four years.

Want to save the Republic? Win the next election. Don’t immolate yourself trying to save liberalism from itself. If your conservative philosophy is indeed right, winning will come. As Margaret Thatcher said serenely of the Labor Party socialists she later overthrew: “They always run out of other people’s money.”

Everyone who watched last night’s presidential debate agrees that Mitt Romney won. Unlike Barack Obama — who actually seemed bored at points, as if he’d been drawn into a tiresome dinner-party conversation — Romney looked like he actually wanted to be there. That fact alone made him the clear winner.

But it wasn’t just Obama whom Romney bested. The Republican challenger also bested the cardboard cut-out version of himself that has persisted in the minds of many centrist voters.

Cardboard Romney, let us call him, was a two-dimensional front man for a raving Tea Party base that wants to gut government, destroy medicare and put copies of Atlas Shrugged in every hotel room bedside dresser, alongside the Gideon Bible. But on Wednesday night, Romney sounded like a normal human being who cares about real flesh-and-blood people — the opposite of the Tea Party vision of America as a bunch of randomized economic atoms bumping against each other in a low-tax, profit-seeking laboratory tube.

Romney even identified some of those human beings by listing specific examples. How about that.

A week ago, The New York Times‘ David Brooks wrote that the Republican Party had become obsessed with economic conservatism — and has forgotten the “traditionalist” half of the conservative tradition. “The traditionalist,” he wrote, “wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighbourhood, religion, city government and national government.” The Mitt Romney who appeared at Wednesday night’s debate reclaimed that traditionalist half.

Real-life Romney’s destruction of Cardboard Romney was owed as much to what Romney didn’t say as to what he did. When the subject turned to health care, he didn’t talk about “death panels.” On green energy, he didn’t recite crank talking-points about global warming being an unproven myth or a UN plot. On taxes, he acknowledged the moral case for rich people paying more. He gave credit to his opponent where credit was due (as did Obama, who also refrained from mentioning the “47%” meme, or similarly snide tweetables).

I’m a Canadian. I can’t vote for either Romney or Obama. But till last night, I supported Obama from afar, because I was alarmed by the degree to which the Tea Party fringe had co-opted the major GOP candidates, Romney included, on most of the major issues. Last night went a long way toward convincing me that a vote for Romney is not a vote for the Tea Party. He’s his own guy, and a humane one at that: As Obama mentioned several times, it was none other than Romney who, as Massachusetts governor, created the template for Obamacare (which Romney awkwardly stands by, but only in its capacity as a state-level initiative).

Going into last night’s debate, there weren’t that many undecided voters left in the United States. But the ones who truly did have an open mind must have come away from the debate feeling a lot more comfortable with the idea of Mitt Romney as the next U.S. president.

OSAWATOMIE, Kansas — President Barack Obama turned up the heat on his Republican foes on Tuesday as he portrayed himself as a champion of the middle class and laid out in the starkest terms yet the populist themes of his 2012 re-election bid.

In a speech meant to echo a historic address given by former President Theodore Roosevelt in the same Kansas town more than 100 years ago, Obama pressed his case for economic policies he insists will benefit ordinary Americans struggling through hard times.

He seized the opportunity to step up pressure on congressional Republicans to extend an expiring payroll tax cut that independent economists say is needed to keep the fragile economic recovery from unraveling.

But Obama’s broader message was a call for people to get a “fair shot” and a “fair share” as he pushed for wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes and for Wall Street and Big Business to play by the rules.

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“This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class,” Obama said in Osawatomie in eastern Kansas. “At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.”

With the 2012 presidential election just 11 months away, Obama’s trip was part of a strategy by the president and his fellow Democrats to cast the Republicans as the party beholden to the rich.

Many Republican lawmakers are skeptical that extending the tax cut beyond this year will spur job creation.

But Republican leaders, fearing a possible backlash from voters in the 2012 ballot, have expressed a willingness to find a way to prevent the tax cuts from lapsing. But they remain at odds with Obama and his Democrats on how to fund it.

Obama used his speech to accuse Republicans of suffering from “collective amnesia” about the recent economic and financial crisis, and he strongly defended his Wall Street regulatory overhaul that many Republicans opposed.

Though polls show most Americans support Obama’s effort to increase taxes on the wealthy, his public approval ratings remain in the low to mid-40 percent range.

Republicans charged that Obama’s latest speech, as well as a series of campaign-style trips to push his stalled $447 billion jobs plan, was intended to distract from the struggling economy and persistently high unemployment, considered damaging for his re-election chances.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/06/obama-channels-teddy-roosevelt-in-populist-re-election-speech/feed/3stdU.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the economy and a payroll tax cut compromise during a visit to Osawatomie High School in Kansas December 6, 2011. More than a 100 years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt delivered a speech in Osawatomie in which he railed against big corporations and the privileged while arguing for "fair play" for ordinary AmericansGingrich at 38% support, jumps to biggest lead yet over Romney: pollhttp://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/01/gingrich-jumps-to-38-support-opens-massive-lead-over-romney-poll/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/01/gingrich-jumps-to-38-support-opens-massive-lead-over-romney-poll/#commentsThu, 01 Dec 2011 21:34:38 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=115216

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich widened his lead over his rivals, according to a poll released Thursday showing him with more than double the support of Mitt Romney.

Gingrich — the former House speaker who in recent days has surged in the polls — received 38% support from respondents in a telephone survey of likely Republican primary voters conducted by the Rasmussen poll organization.

That lead is the biggest attained by any Republican presidential candidate so far in roiling pre-primary jockeying that has seen several contenders claim the frontrunner mantle, only to fall back a few weeks later.

Most surprising, however, is the huge gap separating Gingrich and Romney, who earned just 17% in the Rasmussen poll.

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who consistently has been among the top Republican presidential contenders throughout the pre-primary season, had been deemed by many to be the default frontrunner.

However, in Rasmussen’s national survey of 1,000 people, he appears to have lost a great deal of ground to Gingrich. No other candidates received double-digit support, the poll showed.

The result confirms a Quinnipiac University survey of Republican voters that showed Gingrich pulling ahead of Romney by a commanding 49% versus 39%.

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Other polls from individual U.S. states also confirm the trend of voter support breaking decidedly in favor of the former Georgia congressman.

Gingrich’s rise in the polls, thanks in part to some strong debate performances, has been meteoric: as recently as November 2, the 68-year old former lawmaker earned just 10 percent support, according to Quinnipiac.

The former congressman earned a boost at the weekend when he picked up a major newspaper endorsement in the pivotal US state of New Hampshire.

Gingrich however was recently forced to deny lobbying on Freddie Mac’s behalf after reports emerged that he earned at least $1.6 million from the government lender between 1999 and 2008.

The confessed adulterer has also divorced twice and left his first wife following her treatment for cancer — actions likely to turn off many social conservatives.

His surge in the polls comes with the critically important Iowa caucuses little more than a month away, on January 3.

But voters there are notoriously unpredictable, meaning his rivals could still make a splash there and use it as a springboard going into New Hampshire, where the first U.S. primary vote will be held on January 10.

WASHINGTON — Herman Cain’s alleged mistress on Wednesday revealed she accepted money from the Republican presidential candidate but denied she had a “cash for sex” relationship with the former Godfather’s Pizza executive.

Ginger White, the Atlanta woman who has claimed a 13-year affair with Cain, produced phone records to ABC News showing the GOP candidate had contracted her as recently as Nov. 18 — while he was in the midst of dealing with a separate sexual harassment controversy.

“I can’t imagine waking up one morning and coming out with this [story] if this was not true,” White told Good Morning America.

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“This has been a very difficult situation for myself and for my family. And it’s nothing that I’m proud of.”

Revealing new details about her time with Cain, White described their relationship as a “casual” affair that involved taking “several” trips with for private liaisons around the country. Cain once flew her to Las Vegas to join him at a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, she said.

But “this was not a consistent love affair,” she said.

Cain, 65, has been married for 43 years.

White’s latest interview came after Cain sent out a fundraising letter denouncing White as a “troubled Atlanta businesswoman” who was not telling the truth about their relationship.

Cain told his staff earlier this week he was reassessing his campaign to determine whether the latest accusations might drive off supporters.

On Wednesday, he was back on the campaign trail, somewhat inexplicably in Ohio, a state that does not hold its presidential primary until June.

He told an audience in West Chester, a Cincinnati suburb, that he was the victim of “character assassination” aimed at driving him from the Republican race.

“They’re attacking my character, my reputation and my name in order to try and bring me down, but you see I don’t believe that America is going to let that happen,” Cain said.

Still, there was new evidence that Cain, who briefly topped GOP presidential polls in October, was losing support among conservative Republicans.

Florida Rep. Allen West, one of two black Republicans in Congress, said Cain should consider ending his campaign.

“I think that really beyond reassessing his campaign, he probably needs to understand that he is a distracter for what’s going on right now, and we should move on,” West told a radio talk show. “That would be my advice to him if I had the opportunity and he asked me.”

Cain has said he considered White a friend who he helped recently because she was having financial problems. The candidate’s lawyer, Lin Wood, said Cain had given White money for rent and to make car payments, at her request.

White confirmed she had received gifts and money “consistently” for the last two and a half years.

“This was not sex for cash,” said White. Cain never asked her to keep their affair quiet, she added. But White said she decided to come forward after being pressed by reporters who had received tips that she and Cain had a relationship.

“The funny thing about Herman Cain is, never in a million years did he probably think that I would speak out on this. And honestly speaking, I never wanted to.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was accused on Wednesday of flip-flopping for comments he made in 2007 indicating he was open to a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Romney’s remarks, made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when he was a candidate for president, were circulated by rival Newt Gingrich’s campaign the day after the former Speaker of the House of Representatives came under similar fire for suggesting during a debate Tuesday night that he was in favor of such a pathway for immigrants.

Opponents of a pathway, a large swath of the early-voting Republican electorate, have branded the proposal as equal to an amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Conservative Republican voters in early-voting states like Iowa have demonstrated little patience for candidates or office-holders who are receptive to any plans that would grant citizenship to illegal immigrants.

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The Gingrich campaign noted that during the 2007 interview, Romney said “that those people who had come here illegally and are in this country, the 12 million or so that are here illegally, should be able to sign up for permanent residency or citizenship.”

The two men are battling it out for leadership of the Republican race for the right to take on President Barack Obama in 2012. Gingrich sought to use the immigration issue to further brand Romney as a candidate of expediency, or a flip-flopper.

“”So what’s your position on citizenship for illegals again?” Gingrich said in a tweet.

The Romney campaign suggested that Gingrich was using the quote out of context.

A Romney campaign spokeswoman pointed out that the entire quote indicates that he is not in favor of giving illegal immigrants a “special guarantee” of citizenship.

Romney said in the interview that illegal immigrants “should not be given a special pathway, a special guarantee that all of them get to stay here for the rest of their lives merely by virtue of having come here illegally.”

Romney and the rest of the Republican field criticized Gingrich, who has become the Republican front-runner in some national polls, for saying on Tuesday night he would not favor separating families in an effort to deport illegal immigrants.

“If you’ve been here 25 years and you’ve got three kids and two grand kids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out,” Gingrich said.

Obama’s campaign said Romney has not been clear on what immigration policy he would support and criticized the former Massachusetts governor for changing his position on the matter.

“Governor Romney is somebody who once claimed to support comprehensive immigration reform, but now he is a candidate who is absolutely demagogue to the issue of immigration in a politically craven way because he believes that it serves his political interests,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt. “He is the most right-wing presidential candidate in recent presidential history on this issue.”

WASHINGTON — No one would normally mistake Newt Gingrich’s brand of Republican politics with the “compassionate conservatism” once famously espoused by George W. Bush.

In recent days, the GOP presidential candidate has urged Occupy protesters to “go get a job right after you take a bath.” He has also recommended firing unionized school janitors and hiring poor students to work in their place.

But his call during a Republican debate this week for a more “humane” U.S. policy toward illegal immigrants revealed a different side to the former House Speaker — one that may ultimately damage his chances of becoming the party’s 2012 nominee.

Gingrich, now atop several Republican polls, endorsed a version of amnesty that would grant long-term undocumented aliens a ‘red card’ visa allowing them to gain legal status without earning U.S. citizenship.

He also backed elements of the so-called Dream Act, which would award citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve honourably in the U.S. armed forces.

“If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out,” Gingrich said during a Tuesday night Republican debate in Washington.

“I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century.”

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The moderate position runs counter to prevailing views among many conservative Republicans, who have largely cheered efforts by immigration hardliners in states like Alabama and Arizona to crack down on illegal workers.

Bachmann’s campaign issued a statement saying Gingrich’s position “effectively equates to amnesty for foreigners residing in the United States unlawfully.”

This is dangerous political territory for Gingrich, who spent months campaigning in virtual anonymity before surging — on the strength of sharp debate performances — into the top tier of the Republican race.

Dating to Bush’s presidency, Republicans have consistently blocked immigration reform legislation that even hints at providing a path to legal status or citizenship for people who have come to America illegally.

Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, nearly had his campaign collapse in early-voting states like Iowa and South Carolina for supporting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

In 2010, Senate Republicans filibustered legislation that would have granted legal status to about 500,000 people who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and had attended college or served in the military.

If anything, Republican sentiment on immigration policy has hardened since then.

The Republican legislature in Alabama last June passed a bill — considered the toughest in the nation — that bars illegal immigrants from attending college and requires public schools to investigate the status of students.

Defending a more moderate approach on immigration has already proven perilous for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who found himself pilloried by right-wing commentators for supporting the provision of college tuition aid to students brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents.

“I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry told other GOP candidates who opposed the tuition assistance. His support in polls began to drop shortly after, as conservatives questioned his stance, and Perry was compelled to express regret for his remark.

Gingrich offered a somewhat more artful defence of his position, saying he was “prepared to take the heat for saying let’s be humane” toward the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Still, Gingrich left an opening for Romney, who has lately been jockeying for top spot in Republican polls with the former House Speaker.

“The idea of focusing a Republican debate on amnesty and who we’re going to give it to is a huge mistake,” Romney said.

Granting legal status to people who came to the U.S. unlawfully would be a “magnet” that is “going to only encourage more people to come here illegally.”

The immigration reform plan favoured by Gingrich is similar in spirit to one supported by President Barack Obama, and one that Bush backed during his second term in the White House.

With comprehensive immigration reform going nowhere in Congress, the Obama administration has recently moved to curtail deportation proceedings against non-criminal undocumented aliens.

Gingrich, for his part, said his position mirrored the view taken by President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. Gingrich said that if “you have come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home, period.”

But he favours providing skilled worker visas to every foreigner who earned a “graduate degree in math, science and engineering” from an American university.

Long-standing illegal immigrants, Gingrich said, would get a ‘red card’ — a visa for non-citizens — if they left the U.S. and re-entered with the support of an employer.

A bulge travels through the chart that traces support for Republican presidential hopefuls like a rat stretching the stomach of a voracious snake, which is a physical description not meant as a metaphor.

The bulge represents a rather large but disenchanted, perhaps even feckless, voting block of right-leaning Republicans who have been shifting en masse from one conservative candidate to another as the party moves toward its nomination convention next summer.

It is seen as the Tea Party on the move.

NPClick to view graphic

“Your graph shows they are searching for their right dance partner,” said Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia.

“It’s as though the conservative core of the Republican Party has been looking for its Romney alternative … they do a dance with one partner and find them not good enough and then try another, find they’re not good enough, and the pattern repeats.”

The first bulge, although smaller in size in its infancy, started gathering around Michele Bachmann in July 2011, according to polling numbers, reaching an apex in mid-August when the Minnesota congresswoman won the Ames straw poll in Iowa.

But as her controversial statements, poor debate performances and concern over her husband’s work straightening out homosexuals took their toll, supporters had second thoughts.

By late August, the support started clumping heavily around Rick Perry, the Texas Governor. Through most of September, his support grew to make him the clear frontrunner until his recent slips. In October, it was reported his family’s hunting camp was once named Niggerhead. Disappointing debate performances and gaffes started a precipitous slide.

Mr. Perry’s drop fuelled a surge for Herman Cain, a businessman who was seen as the next suitable conservative alternative. But just as the support was congealing around him, so did allegations of sexual harassment, dampening enthusiasm.

The conservative bloc was almost immediately on the move, polls showed, and starting to cling to Newt Gingrich, giving the former House of Representatives speaker the opportunity to crash steady frontrunner Mitt Romney’s celebrations in the primaries.

“Maybe in the end, it means Romney is the inevitable nominee because the conservative core has not found the right candidate to take him on,” said Prof. Rozell.

But the shifting fickle bulge, jumping from one candidate to the next, might not fill the Romney campaign with joy. In fact, some suggest it could spell his doom.

“It shows that approximately two out of every four Republican primary voters are saying they do not want Mitt Romney to be their leader,” said Eddie Mahe, a strategic communications consultant with Foley and Lardner LLP, who was deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee and consultant to the campaigns of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

“The fact is, Romney and his team have been unable to crystallize that support, to attract any additional support. No matter how good he does in the debates, no matter what has happened, he hasn’t been able to add any support, which obviously leads to a real question of whether he can become the nominee … and whether he can really be formidable in the fall [during an election].”

While most Republican voters would choose Mr. Romney over a Democratic candidate, if there is little enthusiasm for his candidacy it would hurt fundraising, grassroots organizing and, ultimately, bothering to vote.

“That’s the challenge in those situations [that] we have seen, over the years, in both parties,” Mr. Mahe said.

Both Mr. Mahe and Prof. Rozell see a second narrative in the graphs. Not only does it tell of a fickle conservative core and an inability of any conservative candidate to act as anything more than a transitory lightning rod, it paints a clear picture that a large voting bloc has shut the door on Mr. Romney.

“No matter why someone decides to leave Cain or to leave one of the other candidates, they never see Romney as an alternative,” Mr. Mahe said.

Said Prof. Rozell: “The bottom line is, they are running out of conservative alternatives. Who’s left?”

Pundits and campaigners are starting to wonder if the roaming, homeless bulge might draw a new contender into the fray, someone who can become a credible and sustainable Anybody-But-Romney candidate.

“The door is not closed. I think the odds are increasing every day that we will have another candidate enter the race,” Mr. Mahe said.

“I’ve already seen emails and people starting to speculate, the conversation is starting to shift to going to an open convention and nominating someone at the convention.

“Unless one of these candidates really sees a lot more support and respect than he or she now has, I have a difficult time visualizing 2,000 delegates in Tampa, Fla., in August nominating someone that two out of four of them are not happy with.”

“A big-name figure on the conservative right that doesn’t have baggage and could unite the movement against Romney would attract an immediate following right now,” Prof. Rozell said.

There might still be time for the rat to start travelling down another snake. Graphically speaking.

As new Republican contenders have emerged, taken off and then crashed in the polls, Mitt Romney’s support has remained one of the few constants in the nomination race. And yet the GOP can’t seem to fully embrace him. The National Post’s graphics team takes a look at the ups and downs of the race so far.

SHEFFIELD, Iowa — White House hopeful Newt Gingrich, the former US House speaker whose campaign to win the Republican nomination appeared all but over just weeks ago, has now surged to the front of the pack.

His campaign’s revival follows the rise and fall of leading rivals, most recently former pizza executive Herman Cain, who is hounded by a sexual harassment scandal and stumbled badly Monday responding to a question on Libya.

The Republican Party has struggled to find the right alternative to on-again, off-again frontrunner Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is seen by many as the most formidable challenger to President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election but has been unable to gain support of the party’s conservative base.

While conservative darlings congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry shot to the top of the heap as soon as they entered the race only to see their campaigns fizzle, Gingrich has trended in the opposite direction.

Gingrich said Tuesday he is taking his surge in the polls with a grain of salt, noting that the real measure is how Republicans vote in upcoming primaries.

“Things can change very rapidly,” Gingrich said at a campaign stop in Sheffield, Iowa. “In my case, a lot of news media said I was dead in June and July.”

Iowa businessman and former Republican state lawmaker Jeff Lamberti said voters are reconsidering Gingrich for multiple reasons, including their unease with Romney’s appearance of inconsistency on key issues like abortion.

“I think there is certainly a component that is ‘anyone but Romney,’” Lamberti told AFP.

“But also, with all the ups and downs of candidates like Cain, people are giving him a second look. It’s a combination of factors.”

Gingrich’s detailed ideas to overcome such US hurdles as budget deficits coupled with his recent string of strong debate performances has also helped reignite the campaign, political operatives said.

Gingrich took the lead in a Public Policy Polling survey released Monday with 28 percent support, compared with 25 percent for Cain and 18 percent for Romney.

In a CNN poll also released Monday, Gingrich was just two points behind Romney, who was favored by 24 percent of respondents. But the margin of error of three percentage points essentially puts the pair in a dead heat.

Cain’s support in the survey dropped to 14 percent.

Just weeks ago Gingrich was in single digits.

“He definitely is rising in polls, there’s no doubt,” said Chuck Laudner, a former Republican leader in Iowa, the Midwestern state that on January 3 will hold the country’s first presidential nominating event.

“Everywhere I go he’s on the short list.”

Gingrich, 68, is best known for helping his party defeat the Democrats in 1994 and take control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

His time as the third highest-ranking US elected official also led to ethics sanctions against him and a reputation for sparking polarizing political rhetoric.

Gingrich left Congress in 1998 after his party’s unsuccessful reelection efforts and a failed attempt to remove then-president Bill Clinton from office for lying about an affair with an intern.

He launched his White House bid in May and quickly made multiple gaffes, including what he acknowledges were poor decisions such as skipping out on the campaign for a two-week luxury cruise with his wife.

Eighteen staffers, consultants and advisers resigned in June, some speaking publicly about Gingrich’s lackadaisical approach to fundraising and campaigning.

The campaign posted a $1.2 million debt last month. But after his recent upswing in the polls, Gingrich this week described his fundraising as “amazing,” noting that he has more than 1,000 new contributors each day.

The campaign is now hiring staff and opening new offices in early voting states.

Gingrich’s recent campaign success has staying power if he can organize well and deflate moves by rivals to resurrect problems in his past like his admitted infidelity, said Timothy Hagle, an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa.

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Victor Zuckerman, a pediatrician and former boyfriend of Bialek, said he had met Cain with Bialek and he encouraged her to contact Cain about employment. Bialek later told him that Cain had engaged in inappropriate touching of her shortly after the alleged incident took place.

“She said that something had happened and that Mr. Cain touched her in an inappropriate manner,” he said. “She said she handled it and didn’t want to talk about it any further.”

“When Mr. Cain came to the national spotlight, we reminded each other that this was the man we had met so many years earlier,” he said.

Four women have made allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior by Cain in the 1990s when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.

Cain, a former pizza executive who has never held public office, has repeatedly denied sexual harassment. He and his advisers have alternatively blamed the media, Democrats and rival candidate Rick Perry for the allegations.

Cain attorney Lin Wood said the development was a “footnote” in the story and that Cain maintains his innocence.

He also questioned Zuckerman’s credibility, citing his reading of a statement at the news conference.

“There is nothing new, but it is a step in a media campaign strategy of [Bialek’s attorney] to attack Herman Cain in the court of public opinion,” Wood said.

Cain’s fundraising has accelerated following the accusations, with him raising $9-million since Oct. 1, according to his campaign. At the same time, the percentage of those with positive views of him is dropping in some polls.

He trailed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll on who would win the Republican nomination and challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

Reuters

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/14/herman-cain-under-new-pressure-as-sharon-bialeks-ex-boyfriend-corroborates-claim-of-sexual-misconduct/feed/0stdFull Pundit: How much more bad news does the Supreme Court have for Stephen Harper?Rick Perry rebounds after debate ‘oops moment’ with Letterman appearancehttp://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/10/rick-perry-appears-on-late-show-with-david-letterman-after-debate-gaffe/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/10/rick-perry-appears-on-late-show-with-david-letterman-after-debate-gaffe/#commentsThu, 10 Nov 2011 20:59:52 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=108247

Rick Perry sort to get his presidential campaign back on track Thursday by laughing off a devastating gaffe in Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate.

The Texas governor’s moment of campaign infamy came during the CNBC debate in Michigan, as he recited a short list of three U.S. government departments he would eliminate as president.

The governor listed the first two — Commerce and Education — without hesitation.
But Perry drew an utter blank on the third agency he planned to shutter.

For a cringe-inducing 45 seconds, he struggled to recall a key detail of his own policy. Mitt Romney, appearing to take sympathy on his bitter rival, suggested Perry might have been thinking of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“EPA! There you go,” Perry said, sounding relieved, before realizing in fact he hadn’t proposed getting rid of the EPA.

“The third one, I can’t. Sorry,” Perry finally said. “Oops.”

The governor finally remembered the third department — Energy — but his recollection was 15 minutes too late.

Once considered the front-runner for the Republican nomination, Perry is scrambling to keep his White House ambitions alive.

He planned an appearance Thursday on Late Night with David Letterman to deliver the Top Ten list.

Perry’s campaign also sought to turn the candidate’s mistake into a rallying point, asking supporters to identify the federal government agency they would most like to forget.

For his part, Perry noted that other presidential candidates had made blunders when tired. He pointed to Barack Obama’s misstatement in a 2008 campaign appearance that he had visited 57 states.

The Texas governor said he would participate in the next GOP debate, on Saturday in South Carolina.

“We just keep going out there and talking about the issues that we think are important to the people of this country,” Perry said.

“The perfect candidate has never been created yet. … And Americans are pretty forgiving people.”

Perry’s mistake may have most benefited fellow GOP candidate Herman Cain because it shifted attention away from allegations the former Godfather’s Pizza executive sexually harassed four women during the 1990s.

Cain was applauded by the GOP debate audience when he was asked about his character. The crowd also booed CNBC moderator Maria Bartiromo for asking the question.

“The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations,” Cain said. “I value my character and my integrity more than anything else.”

Perry’s campaign also sought to turn the candidate’s mistake into a rallying point, asking supporters to identify the federal government agency they would most like to forget.

For his part, Perry noted that other presidential candidates had made blunders when tired. He pointed to Barack Obama’s misstatement in a 2008 campaign appearance that he had visited 57 states.

The Texas governor said he would participate in the next GOP debate, on Saturday in South Carolina.

“We just keep going out there and talking about the issues that we think are important to the people of this country,” Perry said.

“The perfect candidate has never been created yet. … And Americans are pretty forgiving people.”

Perry’s mistake may have most benefited fellow GOP candidate Herman Cain because it shifted attention away from allegations the former Godfather’s Pizza executive sexually harassed four women during the 1990s.

Cain was applauded by the GOP debate audience when he was asked about his character. The crowd also booed CNBC moderator Maria Bartiromo for asking the question.

“The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations,” Cain said. “I value my character and my integrity more than anything else.”

GREENVILLE, S.C. – U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry vowed to press on with his campaign on Thursday, a day after a major debate stumble and turned to humor to try to answer doubts about his 2012 bid.

“I stepped in it that’s for sure. As a matter of fact I think, still, some of it’s stuck on my feet,” Perry told Fox News after watching a video of his “oops” moment.

Perry, already facing an uphill struggle to mount a comeback, made a difficult situation worse on Wednesday night by forgetting one of the three government agencies that he has repeatedly said he would eliminate if elected president.

The Texas governor and his team launched into damage control to keep his supporters from fleeing to one of several other candidates seeking to rise as the conservative alternative to the more moderate Mitt Romney.

Veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins said the gaffe is damaging but not necessarily fatal.

Since Perry is a good campaigner, has a well-funded operation and has strong conservative credentials means “there’s still a shot,” Rollins said, adding: “I would say it hurt him pretty badly.”

The Perry camp did about all it could do — admit the mistake and laugh about it.

Perry was headed to New York to appear on CBS’ late-night comedy show, “Late Show with David Letterman,” as well as Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.

Scott Olson/Getty ImagesSome of the Republican presidential candidates (L to R) U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, businessman Herman Cain, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) are introduced at a debate hosted by CNBC and the Michigan Republican Party

His campaign sent out a fundraising email that included the email address: forgetmenotzrickperry.org — for people to name the agency they would most like to forget. In the debate, Perry named Education and Commerce as two of the departments but could not remember Energy.

“While the media froths over this all-too-human moment, we thought we would take this opportunity to ask your help in doing something much more constructive; write us to let us know what federal agency you would most like to forget,” the email said.

The Perry camp also tried to put his mental lapse into context, pointing to other missteps like Barack Obama’s mention of 57 U.S. states instead of 50 on one occasion, or Gerald Ford’s attempt to eat a tamale without removing the inedible husk.

“I certainly had the, that agency — of Energy — stuck. It wasn’t even on the tip of my tongue,” Perry said on Fox, appearing to have trouble dislodging the word from his mouth again.

Inside the Perry campaign, the view was that Perry could survive by concentrating on his record of creating jobs in Texas.

Perry, who is looking to rebound after losing his front-runner status, has admitted following several shaky debate performances that he is “not the slickest debater.”

“We’re going to talk about real things,” said Katon Dawson, a Perry adviser in South Carolina. “Debates are 30-second sound bites and we’re not good at that. Being president doesn’t mean you have to be good at 30-second soundbites. It does mean you have to understand the pain that is out there among people who are looking for jobs.”

DEBATE DISTRACTION

Perry’s mistake came at a crucial time, however, with Iowa to kick off the U.S. nominating contests on Jan. 3. Perry has harbored hopes of winning Iowa but has seen his lead disappear there on the rise of businessman Herman Cain.

The gaffe took the intense media glare at least temporarily away from Cain, who has been reeling from allegations that he sexually harassed at least four women when he was head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

Cain’s decline could benefit a mistake-free Perry but with the Texan struggling, there is always the chance that conservatives could turn to former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, however, is viewed by many Republican leaders as an unelectable ideas man who, for example, missed a chance to shine as the latest conservative alternative to Romney by unnecessarily instigating clashes with moderators in CNBC’s Wednesday night debate

Perry’s next chance is in South Carolina on Saturday night when Republican candidates gather for yet another debate, this one sponsored by CBS and National Journal and devoted to foreign policy, which has not been a strong area for Perry.

Perry’s stumble could ultimately benefit Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is in a leading position to become the Republican presidential nominee to face Democratic President Barack Obama next year.

But Perry did not concede anything on Thursday.

“One error is not going to make or break a campaign,” he said on the CBS “Early Show.”

WASHINGTON — A woman who accused Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain of sexual harassment said she was the victim of “very specific” instances of unwanted advances by Cain, her lawyer said on Friday.

The unidentified woman, who worked for Cain at the National Restaurant Association in the mid-1990s, strongly rejected Cain’s version of events that he was falsely accused of sexual harassment, her lawyer, Joel Bennett, told reporters.

Related

The November 2012 presidential election looks to be very close. The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Obama in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney if the vote were held today and ahead of Cain and Perry by single-digit margins.

The harassment furor has tarnished the image of Cain, who leads in polls of Republicans nationally and in Iowa, which holds the first 2012 nominating contest on Jan. 3. He has given conflicting accounts of whether women got financial settlements and shouted at reporters seeking answers.

“It’s devastating,” said Democratic strategist Greg Haas, while cautioning that Obama’s team will not want the Republican field to narrow too quickly. “Our side has to watch and see that they don’t create a situation where they end it fast.”

The controversy is an unwelcome distraction from efforts to find one strong Republican contender, just two months before voting starts in the nomination process.

Longer term, it makes the Republicans look bad and could exhaust resources needed to fight Obama.

“The Republicans are trying to avoid a personal, protracted, difficult fight for the nomination. And this seems to be something that’s pouring fuel on a smoldering fire inside the party,” said Christopher Arterton, a professor at George Washington University who has been a Democratic consultant.

Cain’s campaign said his supporters have rallied, giving at least $1 million in donations as the controversy raged. If supporters remain convinced Cain was treated poorly, and they stay home during the general election, it could benefit Obama.

Cain is a favorite of the Republican Party’s conservative Tea Party wing, which has not embraced Romney.

Arterton said Cain’s supporters could decide not to vote or could back him in a third-party campaign if things stay ugly.

“If Cain’s polls go down and his people get very bitter about this, I think you could see the possibility of their deciding that they would mount a campaign in the fall,” he said.

President Barack Obama’s fortunes rallied on Friday as the U.S. jobless rate eased, his approval rating rose and his Republican rivals battled over harassment claims against presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

Nearly half of Americans now approve of how Obama is doing his job, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, and unemployment slipped to 9 percent from 9.1 percent — good news for the president as he faces a tough 2012 re-election fight with the economy as the key issue.

Rare infighting in the Republican Party, usually known for its unity, also benefits Obama. Cain accused fellow candidate Rick Perry’s camp of being behind news reports the former pizza executive faced sexual harassment allegations in the 1990s.

“Obviously Team Obama wants the Republican field as large as possible for as long as possible,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said. “The more they duke it out, the more ammo Team Obama has going into the general election.”

Democrats have stayed out of the harassment controversy, focusing on Obama’s job-creation plans and keeping campaign attacks on former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whom Cain replaced at the top of most polls of Republican voters.

“It’s clouding the Republican message right now, so that’s got to be good news for Democrats and they are quite wisely being very quiet about it,” said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

“Napoleon I think said you never interfere with an enemy in the act of destroying himself.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 49 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s job as president, up from 47 percent in an October poll. His disapproval rating was steady at 50 percent.

While low, the number of Americans who believe the country is headed in the right direction also rose, to 25 percent from 21 percent.

“The more confused and weak the Republican contenders look, the better their opponent Obama looks,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark.